RECAP: Earthquakes Fall to Real Salt Lake at Rio Tinto Stadium

SANDY, Utah – The San Jose Earthquakes fell to Real Salt Lake 4-0 on Wednesday night at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah. Despite the result, the Earthquakes remain just two points out of the sixth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.

With the score 1-0 in the 61st minute, Quakes midfielder Anibal Godoy was shown his second yellow card of the match, forcing San Jose to play a man down for the final half hour. RSL capitalized on the man advantage by adding three late scores.

Wednesday night’s match marks the first of three consecutive road contests for San Jose. The Quakes now head to Los Angeles to take on the LA Galaxy on Sunday, Aug. 27 at 4 p.m. The match will be broadcast nationally on FOX Sports 1 and over the radio on KNBR 1050 and 1370 KZSF.

On the red card to Anibal Godoy impacting the game:
“It’s pretty tough to play away from home in a place like this, in altitude and down a man that’s for sure. That’s a pretty big one. Playing a man down is tough.”

On what the team needs to do differently to get results on the road:
“We have to change a few things for sure. Obviously we give up some late ones where we’re down a man and the game gets stretched and we gave up a couple today. We can’t give up more of those. We have to be a little smarter. Taking a free kick on the last one when we had guys hobbling up there that had been playing a man down here for a while and they can’t recover and they poached it with two extra guys out there. Things like that are hard and makes the score line look bad and kind of hurts the psyche of the team which isn’t great.”

On what it would take to feel satisfied coming out of the next two road matches:
”It’s that time of the year when you need to get results and you need to get as many points as possible. That’ll be our approach every single game no matter where it is either home or away from here on out.”

SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES FORWARD CHRIS WONDOLOWSKI

On improving results away from home:
“I think that we tackle, we track runners and connect our passes. Last few games on the road we haven’t done that for some rhyme or reason and I think we need to get back to playing simple and playing effective.”

On going down a man:
“It’s not a very good thing, especially against a talented team, against Salt Lake, especially chasing a goal, or down a goal chasing the game, makes it very difficult. You open yourselves up and we got punished for it. Credit to them again, I thought they did well. That was a definitely big turning point for us, but to be fair they had a lot of chances before that as well.”

On looking forward to the next match:
“I’m very frustrated with where we are, but I’m very excited to see how we respond, because I’m hoping we have some fighters in this locker room and if we do we’re going to come out swinging on Sunday.”

On chasing a playoff spot:
“Absolutely. It’s huge. I think we have a belief that we can make the playoffs and that we will. We have our backs against the wall, and it’s time to show what we’re made of and see who are men in this locker room.”